Lab-Made Eggs Produce Healthy Mice 81
ananyo writes "Japanese researchers have coaxed mouse stem cells into becoming viable eggs that produce healthy offspring. Last year, the same team successfully used mouse stem cells to make functional sperm (other groups have produced sperm cells in vitro). The researchers used a cocktail of growth factors to transform stem cells into egg precursors. When they added these egg precursor cells to embryonic ovary tissue that did not contain sex cells, the mixture spontaneously formed ovary-like structures, which they then grafted onto natural ovaries in female mice. After four weeks, the stem-cell-derived cells had matured into oocytes. The team removed the oocytes from the ovaries, fertilized them and transplanted the embryos into foster mothers. The offspring that were produced grew up to be fertile themselves."
And we move forward (Score:5, Interesting)
Robotic spaceships that produce humans at their destination here we come!
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We still need the artificial uterus. And the caretaker robots that can create healthy human minds.
Re:And we move forward (Score:5, Funny)
And the caretaker robots that can create healthy human minds.
We've already invented TV.
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He said "healthy"...
Btw, the last episode of South Park was pretty good on the subject.
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self destruction in 3, 2, 1.
Seriously, who picks the "indoctrination and training" content? People not making the trip?
Jersey Shore meets Mythbusters...in space (Score:2)
Oh sure, drop off colonists after raising them on "Jersey Shore" reruns and "Mythbusters" episodes...
You'll have a generation of resourceful, but unproductive colonists who spend their time doing things like:
- testing the myth that duct tape can be used both as a substitute for heat shielding AND as a quick way to remove unwanted hairs;
- trying to make energy drinks out of hydrazine;
- using the interstellar medium as an in vivo paternity test to identify one's "baby daddy";
- and figuring out whether a tan from Gliese 581 will have the appropriate carrot-orange hue, or will be more towards the reddish, d
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TV and healthy minds don't belong in the same sentence.
JP Hogan's Voyage From Yesteryear (Score:2)
http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/info.php?titleID=29&cmd=summary [jamesphogan.com]
"An Earth set well into the next century is going through one of its periodical crises politically, and it looks as if this time they might really press the button for the Big One. If it happens, the only chance for our species to survive would be by preserving a sliver of itself elsewhere, which in practical terms means another star, since nothing closer is readily habitable. There isn't time to organize a manned expedition of such scope f
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We still need Axlotl tanks in which to nurture the human larvae before they are ready to face harsh external conditions; but(mid to long term) it might well be overwhelmingly more efficient to ship a few blobs of tissue on ice and let the robots build some colonists when they've finished building a colony for them.
(Ooh, boy, though, is Colony Gen. 1 going to have some fucked up parent-issues or what?)
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Damn it man, most people stopped halfway through book 4. They don't reveal most of the cool shit until book 6.
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Re:And we move forward (Score:4, Insightful)
If the robots can build a colony why waste time building human colonists?
Just have robotic colonists.
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Until they invent robotic congressmen pandering to robotic constituents, expect human spaceflight to continue to happen even in situations where machines would make more sense.
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Naturally, the robots would produce human colonists as sex slaves to serve their craven robotic needs.
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you should keep quiet about those kinds of ideas, you don't want people to think you're a robosexual, now do you?
Mice? (Score:3)
Are they as nutritious as organic mice??? (Score:5, Funny)
inquiring Pythons want to know.
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That's all fine and good but... (Score:2, Funny)
Einstein Tesla Baby (Score:3, Insightful)
Lab Notes: August 12, 2023
Einsla is becoming a remarkable young woman. She speaks 29 languages and has built 7 helper bots from spare parts found around the lab. She even re-engineered her iPhone 15 to send tweets telepathically. Who'd a thunk that stem cell eggs and sperm would be so friggin dope?
Lab ntes : Octobre 54, bleh
Einsla is all-powerful. I must obey. farble-blerp. please get out of my mind. [end of transcript]
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Just remind her what Einstein thought of spooky action at a distance, the behavior should subside.
meanwhile another team of Japanese researchers (Score:1)
is developing a robot cat specializing in nabbing and eating the stem cell mice.
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is developing a robot cat specializing in nabbing and eating the stem cell mice.
Sonya the cat (sometimes pronounced Sony).
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Anybody know the expected relevance? (Score:3)
This result is certainly cool in itself, and will probably (eventually) find application in squicking the moralists when an egg produced from a gay man's stem cells is united with sperm synthesized from a transexual woman or something(and will those fireworks ever be worth watching...); but what percentage of the more prosaic fertility-clinic cases are ultimately caused by defective eggs?
I've heard of some cases where the mitochondrial DNA is defective, so the only way to produce a healthy child is by slapping 3rd-party mitochondria into the maternal egg cell before fertilization, and lots of cases where sperm defects end up requiring IVF, sometimes with donor sperm. Are there also a fairly large number of cases where defective eggs are the cause of infertility that just can't be addressed at present by anything other than using donor gametes?
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Well, part of its actual application might be finally shutting up the misandrists* who cheerfully brag that men will eventually be useless when they can engineer artificial sperm, etc, etc. This serves as a neat little reminder that if that's truly the case, we don't need THEM, either.
*: Note, NOT feminists. There is a difference. Learn it.
You'd still need some sort of artificial uterus apparatus to complete that project, otherwise you fall back to the life of brian "We're it going to gestate, in a box?" problem.
(More broadly, though, measuring 'utility' by gamete production is a pretty weird thing to do. "Utility" doesn't even have a cogent meaning unless you define it with respect to the goals of one or more agents. There's nothing in the known universe that is more 'useful' than a screensaver on an LCD unless you make the background assump
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You are woefully ignorant.
Which is why I'm asking the question, in order to obtain data:
Of the X thousands of fertility clinic patients, what percentage would expect to see a better outcome thanks to this egg synthesis technique, if it were refined for human use?
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Surely this means a woman without ovaries (e.g. removed because of cancer) could have her stem-cells harvested from blood (if this is possible), and use these stem cells to create ova. The ova can then be fertilised and inserted in a surrogate uterus.
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I've heard of some cases where the mitochondrial DNA is defective, so the only way to produce a healthy child is by slapping 3rd-party mitochondria into the maternal egg cell before fertilization, and lots of cases where sperm defects end up requiring IVF, sometimes with donor sperm. Are there also a fairly large number of cases where defective eggs are the cause of infertility that just can't be addressed at present by anything other than using donor gametes?
What about the cases of premature menopause where the woman loses all her eggs at an young age, sometimes as early as 25? These families only option would to have a baby by donor egg, which means the child is not the mother's genetic offspring.
Being able to make new eggs would fix that.
I'll be impressed when scientists can... (Score:2)
I'll be impressed when scientists can make life from nonlife.
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If you've been following the news...you don't have long to wait. In fact, if you consider a virus alive, they did it years ago. But work progresses on synthysizing total cells. (Usually under the label of "trying to find the simplest possible cell.".)
I will admit, however, that "not long" is a bit vague. I give it 10-15 years. 20 wouldn't really surprise me. 5 would. So would 25...unless there are drastic cuts in biology funding world-wide.
Parenthood no longer needs to be consensual. (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're not sure what practical application this research contributes to, consider this: We can now create genetic offspring of infertile people. More than that, we can now create genetic offspring of people without their knowledge or consent. All we need is a stem cell sample. Note recent research that enables skin cells to be turned into stem cells.
It shouldn't be long before companies are advertising services like 'Have George Clooney's baby' or 'Father Christina Hendricks' child'. That's just the tip of the iceberg. The first child with two daddies -- literally -- is just around the corner.
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literally -- is just around the corner.
Could you give me an address for this corner?
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"The first child with two daddies -- literally".
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Ah, see, I can see how people might not take the current version of having two male parents as literal, but adoption is a natural and common enough process that it didn't even occur to me to parse it that way. "Biologically" might have communicated the concept better. Still, thanks for clarifying my misunderstanding.
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New cloning technique. (Score:3)
Make sperm and egg from the same source.. Surprised they didn't try that.
Re:New cloning technique. (Score:5, Insightful)
That doesn't result in a clone.
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That wouldn't be a clone, I think. More like a brother or sister. The stem cell still has a full set of DNA, and both the sperm and egg cell would have their random half of said DNA.
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It's actually way worse than cloning. It's much more like a super inbreeding. You're taking 1/2 the DNA and combining it with the same DNA. All of your homogenous dominant and recessive traits become the same, but with the same as any inbreeding, any recessive gene based disease you were a "carrier" for you automatically have a 25% of introducing full on into the offspring. There is an incredibly slight chance that you do end up with a clone if you pull the correctly matched half of each chromosome from
Creepy... (Score:1)
Let's see: stem cells -> eggs -> ovary tissue -> natural ovaries -> oocytes -> removed from ovaries -> fertilized -> transplanted into "foster mothers"... To me, that sounds like a combination between Frankenstein and Fantastic Voyage
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Good news: souls are fictional. No need for debate.
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How do you know?
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A. Never measured yet treated as commonplace and affecting the world
B. Comes from a source that bares most of the genre defining hallmarks of folk-tales
C. At odds with the scientific explanation of consciousness.
D. Too good to be true, so it probably isn't, and someone can make money off you believing.
I'm sorry if you were expecting a logical proof of non-existence, but one doesn't generally prove fiction false. These set of 4 things are more than enough to dismiss any concept they all apply to.
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A. Never measured yet treated as commonplace and affecting the world
This could be interpreted three ways: a) since it is treated as commonplace and affecting the world, it is probably real; or b) just because we can't measure it doesn't mean it doesn't exist; or c) it doesn't exist. Option C boils down to, "The only things that exist are those which can be measured." There are two problems with that, however: 1) We know of many things which exist which we were once unable to detect, see, or measure; 2) It is not claimed that souls may be measured. Indeed, if the claim is
Old news (Score:2)
Not cloning (Score:3)
The practical application of this procedure is probably some way off. If perfected for humans, it could become the ultimate fertility treatment. So long as you have a body, you can have a baby. Surrogate mothers probably needed though.
As of now, it's interesting research that won't interest vain but rich pet owners. You aren't producing a time-shifted twin of the older organism. But if the egg/sperm cells produced are healthy, you might well produce an artifical hermaphrodite where the father and mother are the same.
Maybe in the future gay and lesbian couples can become the full biological parents of their own children without resort to a third-party donor or surrogate.
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So what you're saying is we are one step closer to the human race not needing males?
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eh, they need a uterus to grow.
when they can make a uterus and replicate the hormone cascade of pregancy in a man, then things will get weird.....
Heard this one before. (Score:1)
Sounds sort of like jurassic park.
Mice hatched from eggs (Score:5, Funny)
My first thought on reading the headline was that they made mice that hatched from eggs. The actual discovery is much less impressive.
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Coverup (Score:2)
Cloning!? (Score:2)
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no, the holy grail will be to first synthesize the DNA for parentless humans made-to-order. replicants.